SOURCE: "Importance of Everyday," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 7, 1993, pp. 2, 13.

[In the review below, Hansen addresses aspects of the "ordinary" represented in Working Men.]

Fiction writers have a natural fascination with ordinary jobs. Holed up alone in our offices, we gaze out windows with the left-out feelings of children kept after school, and fantasize, when our writing stinks, of friendlier ways of making a living. Michael Dorris's fascination takes the form of 14 varied but cohesive stories in this skillful collection [Working Men], each offering fresh perspectives on those faceless Americans who seem to have no definition beyond what they do, but whose hidden lives are full of poignance and complexity.

Whether male or female, Michael Dorris's characters are often powerless in love relationships, finding themselves subject to the whims and options of others. In "Earnest Money," a feckless man who evaded the Vietnam draft by going...